Ohio State University,
October, 1898.
THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FROM
SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
[CHAPTER I]
SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Historians who deal with the rise and culmination of the anti-slavery movement in the United States have comparatively little to say of one phase of it that cannot be neglected if the movement is to be fully understood. This is the so-called Underground Railroad, which, during fifty years or more, was secretly engaged in helping fugitive slaves to reach places of security in the free states and in Canada. Henry Wilson speaks of the romantic interest attaching to the subject, and illustrates the coöperative efforts made by abolitionists in behalf of colored refugees in two short chapters of the second volume of his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America.[1] Von Holst makes several references to the work of the Road in his well-known History of the United States, and predicts that "The time will yet come, even in the South, when due recognition will be given to the touching unselfishness, simple magnanimity and glowing love of freedom of these law-breakers on principle, who were for the most part people without name, money, or higher education."[2] Rhodes in his great work, the History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, mentions the system, but considers it only as a manifestation of popular sentiment.[3] Other writers give less space to an account of this enterprise, although it was one that extended throughout many Northern states, and in itself supplied the reason for the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, one of the most remarkable measures issuing from Congress during the whole anti-slavery struggle.
The explanation of the failure to give to this "institution" the prominence which it deserves, is to be found in the secrecy in which it was enshrouded. Continuous through a period of two generations, the Road spread to be a great system by being kept in an oblivion that its operators aptly designated by the figurative use of the word "underground." Then, too, it was a movement in which but few of those persons were involved whose names have been most closely associated in history with the public agitation of the question of slavery, or with those political developments that resulted in the destruction of slavery. In general the participants in underground operations were quiet persons, little known outside of the localities where they lived, and were therefore members of a class that historians find it exceedingly difficult to bring within their field of view.
Before attempting to prepare a new account of the Underground Railroad, from new materials, something should be said of previous works upon it, and especially of the seven books which deal specifically with the subject: The Underground Railroad, by the Rev. W. M. Mitchell; Underground Railroad Records, by William Still; The Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania, by R. C. Smedley; The Reminiscences of Levi Coffin; Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, by Eber M. Pettit; From Dixie to Canada, by H. U. Johnson; and Heroes in Homespun, by Ascott R. Hope (a nom de plume for Robert Hope Moncrieff).
While several of these volumes are sources of original material, their value is chiefly that of collections of incidents, affording one an insight into the workings of the Underground Railroad in certain localities, and presenting types of character among the helpers and the helped. In composition they are what one would expect of persons who lived simple, strenuous lives, who with sincerity record what they knew and experienced. They have not only the characteristics of a deep-seated, moral movement, they have also an undeniable value for historical purposes.